What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail?

I have been absent in my own life for the past few weeks. Too many hours spent working. Too many hours checking out to simply compensate for the long hours of work. I have lost the balance I used to pride myself on, and in the cracks my default positions appear. The difference now, perhaps, is that I no longer beat myself up for them. I simply notice. I simply notice where I am not serenading “the good, the beautiful, and holy.” I notice, without judgment or ideas of things being different. That is the value of getting older. I don’t tailspin. This is the value of years of Course work: my defaults have an undertone of peace that was missing in my younger years. I can’t be hijacked by frenzy or even despair. Not that I have anything to be frenzied or despondent about. I don’t.

But the whirlwind that life has been lately has cost me my daily writing rhythm, and without it, I lose sight of the good, the beautiful and the holy. The only publishing I’ve been doing is the daily lessons from last year, which keeps me on point, but fails to take me deeper. I am behind on my ministerial training for the Course. I am at a loss as to what needs to shift to fold me into a higher plane. I feel too caught up in business and not enough in God.

The beauty is that my default position has become love and that is the backbone of miracles. All of this makes me feel better about the meddling I am about to embark upon with a friend of mine. I am not, historically, one who thinks it is my place to interfere in another’s path. But in this particular case, I put myself out on a limb and if things are going south, as they appear to be, I feel the need to intervene, to protect myself, my friend and the investor. Prior to reading that essay, I would not have felt that it was my place to stick my nose in.

The point is the goal. What is the purpose? What is the motivation behind becoming my brother’s keeper?

I hate that. I want to believe that people are better than they have shown themselves to be, but part of the “interlocking chain of forgiveness” is just that – forgiving them for not being as far down the path as I want them to be, just as I forgive myself for not being as far along as I think I ought to be.

Jay and I watched Monsters University last night. In it, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) is determined to become a scarer and while intellectually, he knows all the right answers, he is not, at his core, scary. He has other strengths, but being inherently scary isn’t one of them.

It’s like me being organized. I can learn skills. I can compensate. But it’s not my default position, so I have to be trained to it.

What I have come to know about those who yearn to own a home but aren’t skilled in prioritizing their bills, is that they will forever be the type of people who end up losing their utilities. They will always be in danger of foreclosure. Can they be trained into a different default position? I don’t know. Maybe. But at the moment, I am thinking not everyone should own a home. Just like not everyone should own a pet.

The interlocking chain of forgiveness requires that love be the first priority. Not judgment. Not ideas that things should be different. Love.

And in the process, what gets revealed is the creation of “the good, the beautiful, and the holy.”

What does that look like? Again, I don’t know. I just know I need to do what I need to do and that is listen. (Step back and let Him lead the way.)